I opened a coffee shop once before but nobody saw me do it.
The first Treeline was born in the dark — a woman alone in an unfinished space at Union Station, sanding a counter at midnight because the build-out was behind schedule and the opening date was fixed and the only person available to sand was the person whose name was going on the window. No audience. No ceremony. Just a belt sander and a woman and the beetle-kill pine giving up its roughness one grain at a time.
This time was different.
Larimer Treeline opened on a morning that smelled like oak and espresso and the particular January brightness that only exists in Denver when the sky is so clear the blue looks manufactured. I stood behind the new counter — the oak from Evergreen, sanded by my hands and Cole's hands, finished with the same oil I'd used on the Union Station pine — and looked at the empty shop and felt the specific, terrifying weight of a second name on a second window.
Treeline. Larimer.
